Getting to Know Freescale's Mechatronics Robot

In May, we told you about Freescale Semiconductor's two-legged robot (FSLBOT) and controller board that lets engineers, students, and even hobbyists experiment with the robot's four servos and many sensors, and we thank you for the many interesting and helpful comments about it.

Here's an update:

I had successful communication with the robot through a USB port on my Mac. The Mac terminal simplified communications because the Mac did not require any special USB drivers -- it immediately recognized the robot's USB connection. And I didn't have to download drivers and go through an installation process. I still haven't figured out how to install the Windows XP USB drivers, and so far, Freescale's tech-support person hasn't provided a solution. He or she thinks I must first install the StickOS software on the robot, but it comes with that code installed and ready to go.

Many thanks to Rich Testardi at CPUstick for holding my hand via phone and email. Testardi tried mightily to help with the lack of a Windows USB connection and got me off on the right foot with the Mac connection. I loaded the "walking robot" BASIC code Testardi provided, but ran into a couple of minor glitches. First, I had to use the "save" command to place the code into Flash memory, which wasn't obvious. Then, the robot ran fine when powered with the four on-robot AA-size batteries.

Second, I could not reconnect to the robot after I ran the program, and my Mac terminal program would not respond to typing. Testardi said the robot got everything I typed, but it needed a CTRL-C to get back into interactive mode. I had used the BASIC autorun command so the robot would run the walking program as soon as I turned it on.

After communicating with the robot again, I tried several simple programs to test the servos, which worked fine. Now, I'll look into the 3-axis accelerometer sensor connections and then the magnetometer-sensor board, which came with the robot. (Sensor modules sold separately.)

Nice in-depth account of how to work with FSLBOT, Jon. Based on your hands-on experience, how might the robot help students and hobbyists dive deeper into mechatronics? And is this simply a training platform or are there possiblities for real applications based on FSLBOT?

Jon, that was an interesting description of your first experiences. First, I suggest you get off of WindowsXP. Windows 7 will make your machine run better and would not have the driver problem, I expect. I did the upgrade to an old machine and it definately improved the system.

I am also wondering about wireless communications. It has a USB port. I wonder if a Zigbee or Bluetooth dongle might work with this. Something to try.

Hi, Beth. The Freescale robot serves mainly as a teaching tool, but because it uses the Tower-family boards, engineers can "graduate" and learn more about these boards and how to use them in an embedded system. The Tower board in the robot provides eight servo outputs, so students can do more than make the robot walk.

I might switch to Windows 7 when I need a new PC, but I don't want the hassle of getting replacement software that will run under Win 7. I ran the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor and many of my programs will run, but according to the Advisor, I would need to reinstall them again. That's too much of a pain. The Freescale Robot caused the only USB-driver problem in some time and I believe the problem stems more from a lack of follow-up and information from Freescale than anything else. So for now, it's Windows XP.

I have upgraded the OS on my Mac several times without any problems and USB devices install without any difficulty. I discovered recently that the audio input on Macs requires a signal input rather than a microphone connection. For about $7 I bought a USB headset adapter that Mac OS immediately recognized and worked with. If I could find all the engineering and design software I use in Mac versions, I'd dump Windows immediately.

I'll continue to look into the problems with the robot and expect to try it with two other Win XP PCs in my lab. But this effort has a low priority for now.

I'm not sure that tool comes for free. When I looked into Windows 7, I found only the "Professional" version at $US 199 includes the capability to run in XP mode. If you know another source of such a program, let us know. Thanks.

Your description of Windows' typical cluelessness about drivers was very funny. According to programmers who worked on kernels for the pre-X Mac OS (back in the PC Paleolithic), due to its mouse-based GUI, among other things, the Mac OS was originally designed to recognize peripherals as an integral part of the system, instead of treating them like alien invaders.

I bought a USB audio adapter so I could use a standard computer headset with my Mac for Skype calls. The Mac audio input expects an active audio signal rather than just a microphone. I plugged in the adapter and had a headset up and running within about 3 minutes. Glad I didn't try that on my Windows PC. But wait, I did...

I wanted to use the PC for Skype, but it has three sound-card options (it came that way) and I could not get the microphone AND the earphones to both work on the same device. I used the system tools for Win XP without success and tried troubleshooting on my own. The small plug-in adapter cost about $20 and was worth every bit of it. The Mac is a gem.

Switched-capacitor filters have a few disadvantages. They exhibit greater sensitivity to noise than their op-amp-based filter siblings, and they have low-amplitude clock-signal artifacts -- clock feedthrough -- on their outputs.

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